Blu-ray Sales: October 15-21

Here’s the latest from Blu-ray.com

For the week that ended on October 21st, Warner Bros.Home Entertainment’s Barbie topped both the Blu-ray-only and overall packaged media charts in its debut. Greta Gerwig’s film is set in Barbie Land, where Barbie and her fellow dolls live in harmony with Ken dolls, at least until Barbie has an existential crisis, leading her and Ken on a journey to the real world. Marking the first live-action adventure for the beloved fashion doll that debuted in 1959, expectations for Barbie were high, with a large marketing campaign and a key summer release date. The film opened to critical acclaim, grossing over $162 million on its opening weekend and outperforming expectations. There was also a bit of serendipity, as Barbie ended up releasing on the same weekend as Oppenheimer, a three-hour biopic about the “father of the atomic bomb”, J. Robert Oppenheimer, which was released by rival studio Universal Pictures, but which was also positioned to be a blockbuster due to the success of its director, Christopher Nolan. However, instead of the two films cannibalizing each other, a social media phenomenon developed which was dubbed “Barbenheimer”, whereby people sought to see both films back-to-back as a double feature. The result was a combined weekend gross of over $246 million for both films. But Barbie has also proved to be a juggernaut of its own, eventually grossing some $635 million domestically and over $1.44 billion worldwide so far, surpassing The Super Mario Bros. Movie to become the highest-grossing film of 2023 to date. This week, Barbie had an HD share of 62%, with 22% of units sold from the 4K UHD format….

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